Gary Lachman is the author of twenty-one books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides, popular culture and the history of the occult. He has written a rock and roll memoir of the 1970s, biographies of Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Steiner, C. G. Jung, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, P. D. Ouspensky, and Colin Wilson, histories of Hermeticism and the Western Inner Tradition, studies in existentialism and the philosophy of consciousness, and about the influence of esotericism on politics and society.
Here he describes Rudolf Steiner’s early work editing the scientific writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as well as his subsequent encounter with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Steiner was known as a polymath and lecturer on many topics. Eventually, he was selected to become the head of the German branch of the Theosophical Society. Later, he left Theosophy and formed the Anthroposophical Society — leading to an enormous burst of creative activity in education, agriculture, architecture, art, theatre, sculpture, and body movement.
(Recorded on November 2, 2018)
Published on November 3, 2018